Franklin chemist admits to wrongdoing at lab

A Franklin woman who allegedly mishandled thousands of drug samples at a state crime lab told investigators she ignored proper procedures, falsified test results and forged signatures for two to three years while working there.? Annie Dookhan, the former chemist, admitted she knew her actions at the lab were wrong, accordi...

A Franklin woman who allegedly mishandled thousands of drug samples at a state crime lab told investigators she ignored proper procedures, falsified test results and forged signatures for two to three years while working there.?

Annie Dookhan, the former chemist, admitted she knew her actions at the lab were wrong, according to the Associated Press, which on Wednesday cited a state police report compiled by investigators for the attorney general’s office.?

"I screwed up big time," Dookhan told investigators during the August interview at her Franklin home. "I messed up bad, it's my fault. I don't want the lab to get in trouble."?

Dookhan, who resigned from the Jamaica Plain lab in March during an internal investigation by the state Department of Public Health, confessed her wrongdoing after investigators showed her a cocaine sample she had labeled positive but that later tested negative.?

She also told investigators that she guessed at test results. When her results were questioned by a second test, she said she would tamper with drugs by concentrating or contaminating them.?Dookhan said she eschewed proper procedures when district attorneys called directly asking for data, gathering it herself instead of forwarding it to the evidence department.?She said at the time she was in the process of a long divorce and did not have money for an attorney.?

State police on Wednesday issued a statement denying releasing the report.

Officials have said that, in her nine years at the lab, Dookhan tested more than 60,000 drug samples involved in nearly 34,000 cases.?

Dookhan has not been charged in the case and hasn't spoken publicly about the allegations. She could not be reached by the Dailyi News for comment on Wednesday.

Gov. Deval Patrick told State House News Service on Wednesday that he closed the lab in August based on Dookhan's revelations in the state police report. The report was first made public by the Boston Globe.?

Patrick recently established a central office to oversee the review of potentially affected cases. The office so far has identified more than 1,000 inmates whose cases hinged on drug evidence from the lab.?

"You have it in greater detail now thanks to the Globe story, but it's the information that caused me to shut down the lab when I first learned about it and to launch these investigations and ... the central law office so that we can get to the bottom of the individuals affected and do right by them," Patrick told State House News Service.?The scandal could lead to convictions in thousands of cases in Massachusetts being overturned by judges.

Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey’s office had evidence from 4,500 cases go through the lab, said David Traub, a spokesman for the office.?

Page 2 of 2 - But Traub said the office does not know how many people were imprisoned based on evidence from the lab.?State police uncovered the scandal in July while assuming control of the lab from DPH and have called Dookhan’s mishandling of the samples deliberate.?

This week, the Globe reported that Dookhan might have lied about her education on her résumé before being hired by the lab in 2003.?She wrote that she was working toward a master’s degree at the University of Massachusetts Boston, although school officials have no record of her ever pursuing an advanced degree there.?

DeWayne Lehman, a spokesman for UMass-Boston, told the AP that while Doohkan did receive a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, she was never enrolled in a master’s program at the university.?

Dookhan began working at the lab as a Chemist I but was later reclassified as a Chemist II.?

"While neither of the positions she (Dookhan) held required a master’s degree, it is now clear that she intentionally misled the (public health) department about her education during the course of her employment," Alec Loftus, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, said Wednesday in an emailed statement.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Matt Tota can be reached at 508-634-7521 or mtota@wickedlocal.com.